In "Printed Circuit Assembly Design", Leonard Marks and James A. Caterina describe the processes, methods, and tools used in designing printed circuit assemblies, the considerations that influence how to lay-out a PCA, and the typical design process and relationships between process elements. The book explains the different approaches for developing and documenting designs and suggests approaches for organizing these activities. There are two types of books on printed circuit assembly design. These books either: (1) focus on solving a specific issue, such as high speed digital design, EMI, or power supply design or (2) cover a broad range of issues of general application to most designs. "Printed Circuit Assembly Design" fits in the latter group and fills a void that is at least 10 years old.

The authors, Marks and Caterina, are very experienced in electronic design and it shows in their book. Mr. Marks has over 35 years of experience in printed circuit assembly design and manufacture. Mr. Caterina has been designing printed circuit assemblies for over 28 years. Their book is well written, illustrated, organized, and edited.

"Printed Circuit Assembly Design" is a road map or framework that highlights or sorts through the issues that concern [or should concern] designers. It describes the proper procedures and considerations necessary to design an assembly. While it is loaded with design tricks and specific practices that are difficult to learn anyplace other than at work, it is intended to focus on broader concerns. Unfortunately, the book quickly "runs-out of information". This is because once a designer makes the first level decisions presented in the book, the specifics of material selection, "real estate" partitioning, and power and cost budgeting quickly loom into view. This is when the authors' decision to exclude references and suggested reading suggestions leave the reader without direction.

Principal chapters of the book are:

• Design Process Flow covering requirements allocation and functional partitioning, circuit design, mechanical design, board layout, board fabrication, assembly, and test & inspection.
• Circuit Board Layout discussing mechanical definition, schematic generation, component part data, part / function placement, circuit routing, circuit performance, routing the interconnects, and checking & analyzing the routed results.
• Design Quality presenting design reviews, checking, producibility evaluation, testability evaluation, PCA reliability, and maintainability & repairability.
• Documentation addressing circuit board artwork, drilling & machining data, bare board fabrication data, assembly data, part & documentation numbering, and archiving data.
• Design Revisions describing schematics & parts list revisions, layout changes, bare board modifications, and assembly modifications.
• Design Organization and Management focusing on structure of the design organization and external interfaces.